Harlequinade
by minotaurbear
Summary: Harlequinade: An 18th century British comic theatrical genre that employed the Harlequin and the Clown as two primary characters. Now with Gotham as their backdrop, the two iconic characters take on darker roles in the forms of The Joker and Harley Quinn as they continuously find themselves enduring the toxic cycle of their tragicomic relationship. One-shot. Rated M for goodness


DC owns everything.

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She didn't speak to him for three whole days. Not that he really noticed though. A plethora of things ranked higher than the petite harlequin in the mind of Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime. For instance, how his black coffee needed to coat his palate in rich bitterness at just the perfect temperature: hot enough to singe his mouth though not scalding enough to blister his skin. He didn't prefer it out of any masochistic propensity simply because he was unable to register pain at a neuropathic level. He preferred it just because. This preference was quite important to him, though unparalleled to his biblical devotion to chaos. The proof of devotion was seen in sleepless nights spent paradoxically formulating meticulous plans to set their city ablaze. A sea of empty coffee mugs, broken pencils, and illegible scraps were a testament to his twisted piety, though paled drastically in comparison to the obsession he harbored over his greatest challenge, foe, and equal: the Batman. He was a madman, working through days that blended into nights that blended into a timeless abyss of chaos, obsession, and precision. Yet his reverence was practiced with such utter conviction and constancy that he'd nearly reached the higher plane of truth known as sanity.

"I need coffee," he called out in a bout of lucidity before returning to his plans.

A resounding silence echoed throughout the hideout until he set his pencil down. He repeated the demand with a louder bark only to be re-greeted by the haunting calm. It bothered him immensely, to the point where he found himself loudly storming through the dark niches of the abandoned funhouse to find her alone on the ratty, patched sofa. She was shrouded in darkness, lit only by a pale sliver of moonlight that dared creep into their serious abode.

"Did you hear me?" he snapped.

She failed to respond and the vision of her goldenrod hair dripping over the back of the sofa incensed him. He grabbed her shoulder roughly and his lips curled back to berate her with a venomous comment, only to pause and realize that she'd been crying.

A nanosecond passed before he released her in disgust.

"Jesus, what now?" he snarled.

She hung her head to avoid his acidic stare and pulled his large purple overcoat tighter around her shoulders, filling her nostrils with the smells of acrid gunpowder, coagulated blood, and a lingering city street stench. It was terribly frayed and littered with rips and holes from countless wears, and while he'd terrorized and slaughtered in it she still felt the safest curled up inside of that coat. He hated when she wore it and yet never stopped her.

"I'm tired," she murmured.

"_I'm_ tired," he growled.

"No. I'm _tired_," she repeated quietly as she sniffled.

"Have you gone deaf, you stupid blonde?" he snarled and grabbed the lapels of his own coat, twisting her around to press his nose against hers.

She stared into his coal eyes and her bottom lip began to tremble.

"I'm at the end of my rope," she confessed in a pained tone.

"Wha_**t**_?" he growled.

"I can't do it anymore. I hurt everywhere. _Everywhere_," she choked out.

"I can make you hurt in places you didn't even know were possible if you keep it up," he roared into her wet face.

"You don't love me. You've never loved me," she whispered into the space between their lips.

Tears clinging to her bottom lids finally leaked down her cheeks and he pushed her away in genuine loathing. Crying, to him, was reprehensibly mawkish; it was a sign of weakness. A sign of weakness, by extension, was a sign of humanity. He was incapable of comprehending these two concepts and either retracted from or took advantage of them when they were detected in a person. In this case, the former applied and he physically withdrew from her maudlin performance by several steps.

He watched her curl into her self, wrapped so tightly in his coat that she could hardly breath. The purple fabric spilled over her bare thighs and calves, swathing her fingertips up to her pale, bruised neck. Cocooned in his battle uniform, she began to rock back and forth in a hysterical fashion. She was bleeding to death on the inside.

"But I can't stop loving you. There's something wrong with me. I even know that. We're toxic, J. We're going to kill each other one day," she cried harder, balling into herself.

"Would you stop being so dramatic?" he sneered.

Her sobs began to reach a fever pitch and he finally noticed the gun in her lap. The cold polymer frame of his favorite Glock had been sitting atop her bare thighs, cloaked discretely by his coat and the surrounding darkness. She'd already taken off the safety and had a finger tightly hugging the trigger.

"Between all the fights we had and all the horrible things that happened and the time that passed… I still loved you. I've dreamt about killing you and I've dreamt about marrying you. I've hated you just as much as I've loved you. I still love you, even though you've never loved me. I was always some sort of challenge or game or _joke_, but I was never to you what you've been to me. And for that, I can't do it anymore."

She raised the gun to her head and stared bravely at him. The Glock had taken countless lives before, both by its owner's hand and hers, and it happened to be the first firearm she'd ever shot. In fact, her very first shooting lessons were conducted using the very weapon. She loved its weight, feel, and fast aim recovery. Yet most of all, she loved that it was his. As she pressed the barrel firmly against her hammering temple she suddenly felt whole. A terribly long moment of silence commenced until it was desecrated by two quiet syllables.

"Harley," he managed that one word.

It was a word that had come out his mouth countless times and held a variety of meaning. It had been said in wrath: whenever the harlequin unintentionally foiled a plan, in frustration: whenever she bore the brunt of blame, in jest: whenever she fell for a gag, in mockery: whenever she expressed something inane, in statement: whenever she was worth mentioning, in acknowledgement: whenever she successfully accomplished a task, in tenderness: whenever the clown was entranced in a state of half-lidded, half-lucid fatigue and found himself smoothing out the sea of golden hair strewn across his chest.

Further, it was a name. It was a name that belonged to a person who had seen more of him than anyone else. It was a name that had been spoken with utter conviction at times and terrible ambiguity at others. It was a name that had evoked impossible emotions out of an emotionless man. And lastly, it was a name that belonged to a woman who truly loved him.

"I love it when you say my name," she smiled sadly.

He watched in slow motion as her finger went to squeeze the trigger, and as if his brain had detached from his body, he impulsively lunged to grab the gun. In a sudden whir he'd shot over the sofa, tackled her to the ground with his fingers clasped to her wrist, and yanked his Glock from her head. The deafening click indicating an empty magazine thundered through their ears, and suddenly as time resumed, they were staring at one another with equally wide eyes.

"You… You tried to stop me," she managed incredulously as their shock began to thaw.

He pulled himself upright and angrily snatched the gun from her hand.

"I didn't want you wasting any of my bullets," he snapped.

"Baby, you tried to stop me!" she squeaked and shot upwards.

She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly. He ignored the gesture as he slid the magazine out of the frame to determine that the entire clip was empty.

"You're so stupid that you can't even kill yourself," he scowled as he tried to pull away from her embrace.

She ignored him and kissed him hard against a scarred cheek. He shifted uncomfortably yet she continued peppering his puckered skin with firm, adoring kisses.

"God dammit, Harley," he barked and snared his fingers in her knotted hair.

He yanked her from his face and held her firmly by a dilapidated pigtail, staring directly into her large eyes.

"Why are you so stupid?" he demanded with a good shake of her head.

It bobbed around for several seconds until several tinny giggles spilled from her lips.

"Come here," she cooed.

"No," he glowered.

"Baby," she smiled softly.

"Don't call me that," he muttered and angrily released her.

She returned to his side to slink her arms around his neck and gaze at him lovingly.

"You're so stupid," he stated with a scowl.

She'd heard this statement a thousand times before yet there was something different in his tone this time around.

"Yeah, I know," she murmured.

She leaned in and kissed him hard. After a brief moment of paralysis, he kissed her back just as forcefully and she whimpered desperately against his mouth. Their mouths were on fire and as they groped hard at one another, they electrocuted the other with hot skin. The kiss quickly melted into a tornado of clothes being torn, stripped, and shed until two burning bodies pressed hard against one another. They became entangled in passionate, rough intimacy as he overtook her, eliciting louds squeaks of equal parts pain and pleasure to escape her throat. As her hands were clenched tightly in his bed of hair, he gripped her sides firmly. His fingertips dug deeply into her soft flesh and he pressed hard against a patch of gauze just above her right hipbone. It immediately seeped red with blood, as his touch instantly reopened the knife gash he had placed on her in a rage from several nights ago. She yelped in a shock of pain and his fingers stained crimson, yet he ignored these things.

Embroiled in his intense hunger, he only increased his performance's speed and power. This elicited feral noises and a mantra of his name, and the blonde, who was quickly unraveling beneath him, slapped a hand around his around bicep and gripped his skin hard. Her thumb pressed into her own product of rage: an equally deep gash that had been prompted by a bout of jealousy. He growled loudly in response and dove into her neck to bite and suck at her sensitive skin. She squealed and clamped harder, just as he amplified his swiftness and pressure on her own hip. They grunted and moaned terribly in pain and pleasure as they reopened the wounds that they had inflicted upon the other - as they had reopened the toxic cycle of their relationship. Both nearing the paroxysm of their passion, blood leaking liberally from their wounds, the marriage between pleasure and pain blinded them.

They inevitably orgasmed together in a properly carnal and yet cathartic fashion and when their eyes rolled into place from the backs of their heads, they gazed at one another in exhaustion. They lay there together in a silent variation of peace, drained and throbbing and utterly content. Further, they were panting heavily and coated in a mixture of blood and sweat with her hand curled tightly in his hair and his body still connected to her own hot flesh, eyes locked in a half-lucid gaze. In a wordless daze they began to contemplate their volatile hurricane of a relationship. It would most likely end in death and they were better off without the other, yet as they lay connected and bleeding they couldn't imagine it being any other way. For two people who strove to live life in the name of comedy, their lives would end in tragedy. This was fact and they knew it as such, and as they stared heatedly at one another, illuminated only by a sliver of moonlight, the petite blonde spoke first.

"The only way I'd want to die is by your hand," she murmured in a ragged breath.

"Because you're too stupid to do it yourself," her lover snapped irritably.

For a fleeting moment she thought about laughing yet her throat produced nothing.

"There's nothing funny about us," she finally mumbled.

"Oh but there_ is_, my dear. You just don't get the punchline," he smirked.

She couldn't fully make out his elongated mouth in the darkness, though she could feel it stimulating the air between their bodies.

"You're going to kill me one day," she stated quietly, "that's the punchline."

"Correct," he confirmed as he idly brushed his fingers up her hip, trailing smudges of blood across her milky skin.

Ridges of goosebumps sprouted beneath his fingertips as the affirmation shivered down her spine, yet she managed a weak albeit genuine smile.

"I guess we'll just have to enjoy the ride until then," she whispered carefully.

He stared at her for a moment with his proverbially emotionless eyes, a dull haze of dark bistre brown trained carefully on a spark of cerulean blue.

"You _are_ pretty fun to ride, my Harley girl," he finally grinned.

She smiled sadly and averted her gaze to the dim outline of the Glock lying on the ground beside them.

"Why don't you do it now?" she asked softly as her fingers curled around the grip once more.

"Don't be foolish. The timing isn't right. The entire delivery would be off," he scoffed.

"It feels right to me," she murmured as she held the gun up to his face.

"I said _no_," he growled, swatting it away.

It flew from her hand and skidded to a halt several feet away on the concrete floor.

"You don't know the first thing about comedy, you goddamn drama queen," he added harshly.

"Hey!" she retorted suddenly, "I'm not the only one with a flair for the dramatic around here."

He raised a brow and a ghost of that facetious smirk twitched at his scarred mouth.

"All… I wanted… was a cup of coffee," he stated dryly.

"_Fine_," she snapped, sitting up, "I'll go make you a stupid cup of coffee."

"I'd watch your tone if I were you," he threatened.

"What are you going to do?" she jeered without missing a heartbeat, "_kill_ me?"

A flicker of a tense moment emerged before they suddenly burst into laughter and his hearty cackle matched harmoniously with her tinny giggles. As she began to stand up, she pulled on his overcoat once more and yet again he forgot to stop her. Perhaps because he was too embroiled in gauging how much he truly despised her. Yet he couldn't stop laughing: for his dedication to and affinity for chaos had tangibly manifested into his relationship with a hybristophiliac bombshell in possession of a psychiatry doctorate, Brooklyn accent, and streak of emotional instability. She was chaos encased in a spirited 5'3 form ready to hurl any and every emotion located on the spectrum. Fate would have it that her object of devotion and obsession happened to be a man whose own mad obsession focused on universal disorder. While she yearned to breath in the oxygen particles that he'd expelled from his respiratory tract, he pined for constant bedlam. He was her Truth, the absolute truth, and chaos was his. Perhaps then, in a vicious cycle based on their respective obsessions, they were truly meant to be together. In short, their volatile relationship was so violent, unrepentant, and passionate that it would truly be insane for them to not be together. She loved too much and he not at all, both of them too far down the sanity chute and yet still at the top, for they were a hilariously serious paradox: the Clown and his Harlequin.

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Thanks for reading! I thought it'd be interesting to highlight the fact that their tragicomic relationship works so well because of their respective personalities. I tried to keep them in character as much as possible. With that said, it's obvious that this Joker also has a sliver of Hamill in him.


End file.
